La extracción de combustible del Reactor 4 de Fukushima amenaza con ser "apocalíptica" | VdeVerdadNews.com - Contrainformación 24h.
La extracción de combustible del Reactor 4 de Fukushima amenaza con ser "apocalíptica" | VdeVerdadNews.com - Contrainformación 24h.
Fuel Extraction Reactor 4 of Fukushima threatens to be "apocalyptic"
It is expected that an operation with potentially "apocalyptic" starts in just over two weeks, on November 8, in Reactor 4 of Fukushima damaged, sinking, when the plant operator, TEPCO, try to remove more than 1,300 spent fuel rods which contain the equivalent of 14,000 radiation Hiroshima pumps, a tank of spent fuel storage located on the top floor of the reactor.
Although the building suffered Reactor 4 is not a merger, a hydrogen explosion occurred and now tilts and sinks and has no ability to resist another seismic event.
Japan Times explained:
To remove the rods, TEPCO has erected a 284 ton mobile crane on the building to be managed remotely from a separate room.
[...] The spent fuel rods will be taken off the shelves where they are stored and inserted one by one in heavy steel chamber while the units remain under water. Once the camera is removed from the pool and down to the ground, transported to another pool in a building undamaged place to store it.
In normal circumstances, such an operation would take a little over three months, but TEPCO hopes to complete the complicated task within the fiscal year 2014.
A chorus of voices has been sounding the alarm about this plan, never done on this scale, to remove the 400 tons of spent fuel from TEPCO, which until now has been responsible for a mishap after another in the continuing crisis on the ground damaged nuclear.
Arnie Gundersen, a veteran U.S. nuclear engineer and director of Fairewinds Energy Education, warned this week that: "They will have difficulty removing a significant amount of bars" and said: "Coming to the conclusion that all will be well is a real leap of logic. " Gundersen presented on the following analogy challenging process of extracting spent fuel rods:
If you think of a nuclear fuel rack on a pack of cigarettes, if you pull up a cigarette will go smoothly, but those shelves have been warped. Now, as they take up the cigarette is likely to rupture and release radioactive cesium and other gases, krypton and xenon in air. I suspect that come November, December, January, we will hear that the building has been evacuated, they have broken a fuel rod, the fuel rod is releasing gas. [...]
I suspect we'll have more airborne gases as they try to make the fuel. If you pull too hard, will leave the fuel. I think the shelves have been warped, overheated fuel pool-boiled-and the net effect is that it is likely that some fuel is left in for a long time.
Japan Times adds:
The extraction of the fuel rods is a task usually assisted by computers to know his exact location one millimeter away. Working virtually blind in a highly radioactive, there is a risk that the crane to drop or damage to one of the bars, an accident will suffer even more in the Tohoku region.
As explained so many years anti-nuclear activist, Harvey Wasserman:
The spent fuel rods are kept cool constantly. If exposed to air, the zirconium alloy cladding will begin to burn, the bars will burn and emit vast amounts of radiation. If the bars are touching, or if they fell into a pile large enough, it may explode.
"In a worst case scenario," RT adds:
The pool could collapse, releasing the bars together in a stack that could fission and cause an explosion many times worse than in March 2011.
Wasserman says the plan is so risky that requires a global task, and declared that Common Dreams:
The decrease of the fuel rods in Unit 4 of Fukushima may be the most dangerous job ever undertaken engineering. Everything indicates that TEPCO is totally unable to do so safely, or reliably inform the global community about what is happening in reality. There is no reason to believe that the Japanese government could do better. It is a task that should only be undertaken by a dedicated team of top scientists and engineers in the world, with access to all necessary funds.
The potential gas releases in this situation can only be described as apocalyptic. Only the cesium contamination equivalent to 14,000 Hiroshima bombs. If the task fails, radiation emissions could force the evacuation of all people of the place and could lead to failure of electronic equipment. Humanity would be forced to watch helplessly as billions of curies of deadly radiation would reach the air and ocean.
By horrendous sound the warning Wasserman, pollution researcher Christina Consolo echoes her and told RT that the worst-case scenario would be a "true apocalypse".
Wasserman said that in view of the gravity of the situation, the eyes of the world should concentrate on Fukushima:
It is an issue that goes beyond being against nuclear power. The fate of the earth is at stake and everyone must monitor every action now takes place. With 11,000 fuel rods scattered around the place, while a constant flow of contaminated water poisoning our oceans, our very survival is at stake.
